Ex-deputy will get 18 years after detainees drown in locked van

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A deputy in South Carolina whose police van was swept away by floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two girls searching for mental health therapy trapped in a cage in the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

A Marion County jury found former Horry County deputy Stephen Flood responsible of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless murder.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their families stated they were not violent. Newton was only in search of medicine for her worry and nervousness and Green’s household mentioned she was dedicated to a mental facility at a regular mental health appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after several kinfolk of the women mentioned his choice to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, stubborn man,” Green's sister Donnela Green-Johnson informed the judge. “He abused the belief my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To save time.”

Circuit Courtroom Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter cost and four years on every reckless murder cost and ordered the sentences served back-to-back.

The floodwaters swept the police van off its wheels in September 2018 and pinned it against a guardrail, stopping the women from being able to get out the sliding door they used to enter the van. Flood and a deputy with him didn't have a key to a second door and there was no emergency escape hatch, in response to testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the women and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour as the water stored rising before it obtained too harmful and rescuers could no longer hear them.

“How awful should which were to sit down there and wait to your personal demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

While other components like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's exact location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless choice to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Highway 76 simply outside Nichols, however Flood drove around them after briefly talking to the soldiers.

Clements read from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he could not turn round as a result of he might now not see the edge of the freeway and was anxious about operating into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his satisfaction or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed forward into water that was not just standing in a tall puddle, however it was speeding, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements stated.

Flood's lawyer mentioned whereas it was a horrible tragedy, others had been attempting to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as a substitute of the gear problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and despatched him though taking the women to the psychological health amenities was not an emergency.

"I ask that you simply resist the urge to try to give justice to those two ladies by giving injustice to this good man," defense lawyer Jarrett Bouchette stated. “They need to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, however earlier than he was sentenced informed the judge he tried all the pieces he might to keep the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was gradual to arrive.

“It was a series of mistakes on my half and other those that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what occurred to the girls,” Flood stated.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were eventually rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities mentioned. Bishop will stand trial for two counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, but it nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they had been able to lower the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water received greater and sooner and it was too dangerous to proceed.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood needed to be taught to observe the foundations and use frequent sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, however I cannot forget. Happily, I still keep in mind my mom as a cheerful woman, a joyful woman who liked her family," he mentioned. “But you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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Observe Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.